Historical and ethno-linguistic maps of Tigray

[africangear]

One of the issues in the Tigray war in northern Ethiopia is the territorial control of Tigray’s western zone. It is a part of Tigray that is currently controlled by military forces of the Amhara region, and where large-scale ethnic cleansing has taken place.

As part of the argumentation, cherry-picked historical maps are frequently used.

Professor Jan Nyssen from the department of Physical Geography at Ghent University in Belgium and his team have compiled a dataset of all available historical and ethno-linguistic maps of the area (since the 17th Century), and carried out a meta-analysis. They have specifically focused on timelines of territorial control, as well as consistency in ethno-linguistic maps. The database contains only co-eval maps, i.e. maps that were prepared in the same time period as the geography that is displayed on the very maps.

Direct link to the map database